


a shot of truth

by bytheinco_nstantmoon



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Carrie Wilson Redemption, F/M, Growing Up, Identity, Introspection, Levana Love Club, NOT SAD, Post-Canon, Tenderness, This is so sappy, Underage Drinking, bc u know, but they're 19 and it's WINE, coming home, i literally only write for my wives at this point yikes, idk - Freeform, is this fluff?, it's actually a new years fic, it's not even sad, it's so sappy, jon is back again with the metaphors baby, maybe a bit bittersweet but like, rebirth or whatever, reunited, so does it even count, yes it's a christmas fic but it's actually not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28464723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bytheinco_nstantmoon/pseuds/bytheinco_nstantmoon
Summary: "A long time ago, Nick curled up in her bed comfortably, the covers kicked down by his feet, making fun of her many pillows but taking full advantage of them. But hasn’t it been a damn long time?"-or; Carrie comes home for Christmas.
Relationships: Carrie Wilson & Happiness, Nick/Carrie Wilson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	a shot of truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenlevana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenlevana/gifts).



> i just. miss carrick. give me more please. i love them, actually

Carrie’d never planned on college at all, much less anywhere out of state, but she’d figured she ought to apply somewhere. She’d gotten into UCLA, and had assumed she’d go there. She’d bought a sweatshirt and everything. Everyone knew. And then all at once, for no reason at all, she’d woken up in a panic two days before the decision was due and dropped her registration. Two months later, on a redeye to New York City, she deleted the contacts off her phone.

There’s one that’s still in there, even all these months later. She hadn’t made it home for Christmas, caught up in all her new friends and some boy who she could hardly remember now. She’d kissed him on the New Year. She wishes it had mattered more. At the end of the semester, her dad had touched down, and the two of them had spent the summer upstate, catching up on lost time. Now, though, with more of that time tucked away into her memory, Carrie is in the room that used to be hers for the first time since that redeye, staring at the contact she never did get rid of.

They don’t have any texts, any calls- she’d deleted them all in a fit back when they were sophomores. Just a name and number, sitting in her phone. She can press it, if she wants to. It wouldn’t be hard. Just a simple movement of her thumb. That’s it. That’s all.

It feels like moving mountains.

Carrie’s not so afraid of mountains anymore.

It rings once, twice, three, four times, and on the fifth, when her heart is dropping, when she’s remembering how late it is and how he’s always turned in early- “Hello?”

His voice still sends chills down her spine. “Hey,” she greets softly. “It’s Carrie.”

“Yeah. I know.” His voice isn’t cold, but it’s not welcoming. It’s rigid. Confused. Carrie’s toes curl.

She stares at her own unfamiliar bedspread. “Merry Christmas.”

There’s a pause. “Merry Christmas, Carrie,” he replies. His voice is slow. Careful. “Is that- is that all you called to say?”

_ Yes, _ she should answer.  _ That was all. Happy holidays. I’ll send you a postcard on Easter. Goodnight. _

Instead, she says, “Do you want to come over?” and doesn’t even know how to regret the offer.

“Oh.” He pauses. “You’re back?” She nods before remembering he can’t see her, but he keeps talking as if he could. “Red or white?”

She cracks a smile. “Red.”

“So festive. I’ll be there in five.”

And it’s exactly the same, sneaking out of her room, tiptoeing down the stairs, even though she knows Dad will know anyway, just like he always does; pulling open the back door just a few minutes too early. Back then, she was too excited to wait. Now, she just doesn’t know what she’d do with the unfamiliarity. She hears a car door close on the other side of the fence, a strain of quiet whistling dropping away as he crests over the barrier and drops down. He has his old highschool backpack slung over his shoulder. It’s nearly the only thing about him that doesn’t send chills of change crawling over her skin.

And it’s exactly the same, the way he walks, crossing the concrete of their pool area, slinging an arm around her shoulders to pull her inside. It almost warms her back up. The wind rushes in with them as they lock up again. Carrie’s fingers fumble on the lock.

“You look cold.”

“It’s winter.”

She can’t quite identify what grows in his voice, but it blossoms like venom against her throat and makes it hard to swallow. “I thought New York was colder than this.”

“Well,” Carrie says, and then has to pause to swallow again, because Nick makes it hard to keep herself together sometimes. “Well, this isn’t New York, is it?”

Nick makes it hard to keep herself together, but she’s never felt like she does when his eyes fall onto hers, heavy with something foreign; the weight drops his ache into her, and it finds a home beneath her breastbone, expanding, catching on her ribs, contorting itself into a space too narrow for its expanse, holding her throat open so that she can’t breathe, can’t swallow, can only feel that damn weight holding her heartbeat back. She hasn’t separated this fully in a long time. The stitches of New York wind that lace up her skin are straining. She can feel the city lights in her eyes flickering under the burnt out stars that drift inside his. For a moment, just one moment, Carrie is a ghost for him.

“No. It’s not.” His voice lodges inside her bones, draining the marrow away for something heavier.

Carrie looks away first. “You remember where my room is, right?” He snorts, but doesn’t answer. Just follows her upstairs and locks the bedroom door behind him. They’d never locked the door when they were younger.

They’re not younger anymore, though. The Nick that kicks off his shoes, perching on the edge of her bed as he pulls out the bottle of wine he’d brought, is not the Nick that last came in here. His shoulders are broader, his jaw more square, his nose slightly more crooked. His hair parts on the other side now, a shade darker than before, longer than she remembers. He’s wearing UCLA sweatpants. Carrie left her sweatshirt in New York by accident.

“Forty eight months,” she murmurs, mostly to herself.

Nick hums, using a pair of scissors off her nightstand to uncork the wine. Unadvised, but it works. The boy she kissed on New Years last year always did weird shit like that. Shortcuts. He was good at it. She wishes she remembered his name.

When he speaks, she jolts, momentarily surprised. “Two hundred and eight weeks.”

“Two hundred and seven,” she corrects. “Leap year.”

Nick wrinkles his nose. “Well, fine. If we’re being  _ that  _ picky…” he tilts his head, his nose scrunching up like it always does when he’s pondering hard about something. “One thousand three hundred and sixty days,” he concludes. He takes a swing of the wine right after, straight from the bottle. Carrie might care if it were anyone else doing it.

“That’s a long time,” she says.

Nick passes her the bottle. “Yeah,” he agrees, his voice softer. “Doesn’t have to be, though.”

But doesn’t it? When everything’s changed, when Nick’s eyes are heavy with stars that don’t shine anymore and his hair is parted on the wrong side, hasn’t it been ages? Hasn’t it been millennia? Isn’t every lost moment lying on the bedspread between them, polarised, unable to connect? Isn’t the deepest connection here the ache they echo in each other? Hasn’t it been a damn long time?

A long time ago, Nick curled up in her bed comfortably, the covers kicked down by his feet, making fun of her many pillows but taking full advantage of them. It’s been a long time since then, but Carrie reaches out anyway, tugging at his elbow. “Come on. Lay down,” she says.

“I’m drinking,” he protests.

“Stop, then.”

Nick’s smile twists a little. “I’m not good at that,” he admits. He sets the wine onto her nightstand, though, sliding down to sprawl over her covers on his back. There’s only inches between them, but it’s like a mountain.

Carrie’s not scared of mountains. She’s still wary of what waits on the other side, though, so she keeps her hands to herself. “How’s UCLA?” she asks.

Nick hums. “It’s alright, I guess.” He doesn’t look over at her. She doesn’t press him to, even though she aches to be pried apart by the look in his eyes again. He’ll come to her in time. In time. She just has to give him time. Even if it’s been a damn long time already. “You would’ve known,” he adds. “If. You know.”

“If,” she echoes. “Yeah.” If she’d stayed. If she’d gone with him. “I like it there,” she says. It tastes like guilt against her tongue, thick and silk and heavy. “It’s nice. Lots of lights.”

“Lots of lights here, too.”

“It’s not like you asked me to stay.”

Nick is quiet for a long moment. “No,” he finally says. “I guess I didn’t.”

“You could have,” she adds. “And I would.” He scoffs. “I would have thought about it,” she amends. “I would have told you, at least.” Nick stares down at her bedspread, tracing it with his finger. She wonders if he realises she hasn’t changed it in the past one thousand three hundred and sixty days. “Did we kiss?”

His head jerks up. “Huh?”

“That last day. The last time you were here. Was that our last kiss?”

Nick’s eyes keep laying heavy on hers. Carrie forces herself not to look away. “No,” he finally says, breaking whatever terribly fragile thing had been stretching in the silence. “No, it wasn’t.” His eyes drop to her lips, just for a moment, and it’s the weight of his gaze that pulls at her bottom lip, her mouth parting of its own accord. “Prom.”

“Prom,” she echoes. “That wasn’t a real kiss, though.” Someone had strung up mistletoe, even in the middle of May, as some sort of end of year prank, and she’d been caught there with him. “I was just trying to prove something.”

“I guess we never had a real kiss, then,” he says, laughing slightly, pushing himself up on one elbow to grab the bottle. Pushing himself away from Carrie, away from the ache in her heart that’s new and old and strains at her from the inside out like a grinding stone.

Her heart is in her throat, choking up her words, but she still manages a hoarse, “Is that what you think?” that stops him in his tracks.

Their eyes meet again. There’s something hesitant in the ashes behind his iris this time. “Am I wrong?” His voice is hoarse too. Is his heart caught up in his throat? Is he choking on it? Is he trying to breathe through a pain he thought he had put to rest, one that sends shivers up his spine and feels like a belated taste of home?

Carrie swallows hard. “Yeah. Yes, Nick, yes, I-” her hand hovers in the air between them, halfway to his face. It doesn’t fall to the covers. It just stays there, trembling, like the beginnings of a star in the space between them. “I never wanted to prove anything to you. I wanted you. But you didn’t… I didn’t know who to give you.”

“I said yes for a reason,” he replies. His eyes are unwavering. Carrie is caught in a windstorm, a hurricane, and a tsunami, that crashes over her and wipes her away. Her stitches are straining, waiting for a dream to burst through. “The girl that asked me to coffee. That’s the girl I wanted. That’s the girl I said yes to. And I kept- I kept waiting for her to come back to me. But she never did.”

Carrie’s eyes sting. “And she never will,” she says softly.

“She doesn’t have to.” Nick presses his fingers into hers, their palms interlocking, something brilliant exploding between their enclosed hands. “I’m not sixteen anymore.” He squeezes tightly for a moment. “I haven’t been waiting on her for a long time.”

“What about someone else?”

“I could make arrangements.”

Carrie searches his eyes. “What if she’s not sure how long she’s staying?” she asks, her voice trembling slightly.

Nick’s hand comes up, tucking some hair behind her ear. “People leave,” he replies. “I won’t mind. Just so long as she knows I’m here.” His eyes have softened. The stars aren’t back yet, but the ashes are sparkling with their dust, and that’s better, somehow. Carrie doesn’t want the old Nick back. She’s okay with a crooked nose and rougher hands and UCLA sweatpants. She’s okay with stardust and ashes inside his eyes.

“I’m sorry it took so long to get here,” she whispers. She feels vulnerable. Her stitches have unwound themselves, the city lights crashing down, and it’s all come crashing down, leaving her bare. The girl she’s been trying to run from is left with a hand on her jaw and her mouth lingering with the taste of red wine, out in the open, back from the dead. She becomes the ghost inside her, and she feels so much more alive.

Nick’s touch is gentle on her face, but not hesitant- he doesn’t touch her like she’s fragile. He’s always been afraid to shatter her. The warm tide of affection rising through her doesn’t feel like that. Is this what they’d been waiting for? “I’m sorry I wasn’t reason enough to come back,” he answers.

“Why do you think I did?”

The silence isn’t as heavy this time. It wraps around her like a blanket, tangling the two of them closer together. This is easy, this silence. They never were much for silence before. Is that what they were missing? The stretch of comfort that tangles them into something more intimate than words- is that what had her on that redeye? Is that what burnt out his eyes? It’s been a damn long time of it, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. How else could they have stumbled into realising that everything they need to say is in the moments unsaid?

“I want to love you,” he admits. “Ever since I said yes, I’ve wanted to. You can’t take that away no matter how long you leave.”

Carrie doesn’t know when she started smiling. “Well, it’s only been a thousand days,” she says, her voice soft.

“Then can I try?”

His palm is rough against hers, the stardust in his eyes drifting into her soul, his lips half parted like he hadn’t quite meant to let the question out. There’s a thousand stories in a thousand days, in every callous on his hand and every freckle on his cheeks and the crooked tilt of his nose. Carrie wants to learn all of them. She wants to know Nick’s stories like they’re her own. She wants to keep this ghost he holds inside her heart alive. She wants to think of tonight whenever she wears the sweatshirt she left in New York.

She pulls both hands away and reaches up, ruffling at his hair. He stays still for her, confusion creasing the corners of his eyes, as she combs it back into its old part as well as she can with her fingers. “Don’t slip all the way away from me, pretty boy,” she murmurs, and then cups his face in her hands. “I want to love you too.”

They end up tangled together, the covers kicked down the end of the bed, pressing the bottle of wine to each other’s lips, exchanging whispers and silences. She fits easily back into this spot by his side. It feels more like home than the walls of this room ever did.

“Merry Christmas, Carrie,” he mumbles in her ear, half asleep.

Carrie keeps holding his hand. “I’m glad I came,” she murmurs back, and then it’s silent.

Then it’s silent. And God, it’s good.

**Author's Note:**

> this was mostly written at like 4am and only one person read over it for me real quick so like. spare me some grace. i love you all!!! happy new year!!!
> 
> let me know what you thought! drop a comment or hmu on tumblr @bobbywilsonsupremacy (yeah, this brand is back, baby)


End file.
